High Crimes and Mr. Wieners

High Crimes and Mr. Wieners

  copyright 2012, Paul Hawkins

  *

  "High Crimes and Mr. Wieners": When a local kid's TV show personality and his seven trained dachshunds get kicked to the curb in favor of generic PBS programming, the discovery of a hotdog-man suit in a fast food dumpster leads to a new career as a costumed crime fighter (hey, dogs have to eat). And will the lady in his life discover his secret? Okay, let's admit it - there is no lady in his life – at least not now - just lots of mooched wifi.

  *

  His real name was not Mr. Wieners, of course, and before his Public Television show got axed, his stage name had not been not Mr. Wieners. That title came later – when he began fighting crime. The press gave it to him. But beforehand his given name had been plain old Alan Wainwright, and his stage name had been “Doctor Doggshund” (get it? Dachshund?). He did a show with a live kiddie audience bused in from local gradeschools that focused on proper pet care and featured the odd exotic animal or nature clip or rescue shelter adoption spot. But his show got axed when the local PBS affiliate got a grant to feature some nationally-produced show that used cartoon Bananimals (part banana, part animal - get it?) to teach diversity and math.

  “Not diverse? One of the dogs is a Jew, one’s Hispanic, one’s crippled, and two are transgendered. I admit the rest of them are White.”

  None of the local station’s execs were amused, so he continued. “Hey, dogs are the universal language. All folks love them. Their loyalty has brought folks out of comas, for pete’s sake. They bring down peoples’ blood pressure just by being there to pet. That, my friends, is a scientific fact! Isn’t PBS about science?”

  “I’m sorry. Effective immediately, we’re replacing you with the Bananimals.”

  “For Christ’s sake. How long have we known each other, Bill? We came into the business together.”

  “Sorry Alan – it’s about money. The Bananimals are a trifecta: they got animals, math, nutrition, and multi-culturalism.”

  “Trifecta? That’s four.”

  “I don’t have time for this Alan. I’m sorry.” He held out an envelope. “We get all our funding with strings attached these days. Here’s your severance check. The time for your show has passed.”

  “But what about the dogs?”

  Both men looked down. Seven adorable dachshunds surrounded Wainwright’s feet.

  “No one’s taking them from you.”

  “But how will I support them? Seven mouths, seven sets of vet’s bills – that show was their livelihood.”

  “I’m sure you’ll figure something out. Kids’ birthday parties – something.”

  Wainwright noticed that his former friend had been walking him to the door. The secretary, whom he had known for fifteen years, set her face and would not look at him. She needed her job. No bad will - it was just a different era.

  “So long, Wainwright – and good luck. By the way, effectively immediately, we got a policy of no pets in the building.”

  And then just like that the door clicked shut behind him, and he was out in the hot sun, staring at his crappy car across the parking lot while seven sets of dark brown eyes stared at him, all to remind him it was past their lunch time.

  “Come on guys,” he said. And with that he held open the backseat door and seven sausage-long bodies launched themselves onto the pleather benchseat and began jostling for the best spots near the windows.

  Wainwright turned the key and the old car started with a cough. He let his head sink to the steering wheel. “What am I going to do?” he said aloud. “What am I going to do?”

  *

  The birthday party route proved no good. The economy had been tight for some time now and anyway kids did not seem to take to dogs like they used to, them not having lasers and such, much less a middle-aged man with middle-aged laser-less dogs, and anyway he gave off an aura of glum desperation that made young moms wary. Soon his business dwindled to nothing. He removed his ad from the back of the newspaper and stopped answering the phone. In fact, he sank into a funk. He took to staying in his cruddy apartment and mooching wifi off his neighbors. He stopped shaving. And one day, when he went to cash a check to buy the week’s supply of pet food, he was told his bank account was empty. After the lady at the teller window had scolded him, he turned and slinked away. The dogs looked up at him but he could not meet their eyes. He had no hope, and no reply.

  He got an idea, at last – a desperate one. He would lead them to the dumpster behind the hot dog joint that night. Maybe he could find enough scraps to feed them.

  The place was near his apartment. Once the sun had set he cracked his door open, snuck past the door of his nosy next door neighbor Nora (or was it Dora?) and led his seven charges down the stairs, across the street, then through the alley behind the fast food joints. Here and there the dogs sniffed one dumpster after another but always turned back discouraged. And then they came to the bright blue dumpster behind the Coney King, and there his heart failed him, for in the window was a big hand-painted sign: “OUT OF BUSINESS.” But even as he was ready to despair the dogs had the opposite reaction, for they were striking to attention at the big blue bin. Wainwright stared at them, stared at the dumpster, then creaked its lid open. And sure enough, inside were packages and packages of hot dogs, and they still seemed good. He tore these open and tossed them over his shoulder to the dogs, and the dogs attacked them hungrily.

  And as the dogs were enjoying their feast, he noticed a patch of bright red and yellow peeking out from behind some flats of cardboard. He pushed these aside, grabbed at the swatch of color (it was cloth), and pulled it up. As he pulled it kept coming, and coming, and coming. When he had at last pulled it completely out he held it at arm’s length and identified it: it was a “Hot Dog Guy” costume. He remembered now. His mind raced back to all the times he had seen “Hot Dog Guy” dancing desperately at the curb, holding a sign, trying to lure traffic to the business. Apparently it hadn’t work. But Wainwright admired it. In fact, as he looked from the costume to his seven hungry wiener dogs, a flash of hopefulness occurred to him as though this were a moment of destiny, a kind of sign. But of what? He did not know. Just something wonderful like a blessing.

  And while he stood pondering a scream came from across the alley, dashing his reverie with a single piercing cry of “Help!” All his charges’ tiny canine heads pivoted simultaneously in the direction of the scream. Down the alley, behind the pawn shop, a lady was struggling with a hoodlum for her purse.

  Wainwright’s natural instinct was to run away, but the dogs’ stares wouldn’t let him. He knew he was the alpha dog to them, the one they looked up to, but that the position was always precarious at best. If he turned tail and fled he would never have the authority to shoo them off the couch again. So he did the only thing he could do: he donned the Hot Dog Guy suit to conceal his identity and raced toward the altercation. The dogs followed in a cloud of excitement.

  “My purse – you awful man!”

  “Shouldn’t be cashing your social security check at night, grandma!”

  Wainwright sucked in his breath and puffed his chest out to its full unimpressive span and leapt out of the shadows in his costume, and his seven angry dachshunds latched onto the purse-snatchers limbs at once.

  “What the heck?” the thug screamed as the tiny teeth sank into him. He leapt around in agony. Wainwright spotted an old metal soda syrup canister next to a dumpster and brought it down on the thug’s head. The villain sank to the ground like a rock. Wainwright took the purse from him and handed it back to the old lady.

  “You better beat it before he wakes up,” he said.

  She flushed and cooed. “Oh my! What a nice man! Howeve
r can I repay you?”

  At first he was about to say “No reward required, good citizen!” but then he realized he had seven mouths to feed and so he said, “Maybe twenty bucks so I can feed these fellas here?”

  “Twenty? Fifty I say!” She handed him the bills. He felt like a crud but he took them anyway.

  He walked her to the safety of the streetlights but did not enter them himself. Instead he hung back in the shadows, and once he saw her walking safely down the sidewalk he and the hounds high-tailed it out of sight.

  He made his way back at his apartment, snuck past his nosy neighbor, and once inside he counted and recounted the money she had given him late into the night and looked over at the Hot Dog Guy costume, and then at his seven sleep charges, and he wondered if it had all been some crazy dream. He decided he’d sleep on it and find out tomorrow. But as he slept his mind played out a novel idea, a brilliant idea, and it soon became apparent that his subconscious, in any case, had figured out a way to feed his pets and save the world (or his corner of it) if he were bold enough. Well, desperate and bold enough. Some time in the night he decided that he was.